Family
by Agent Striker
Summary: ONE-SHOT: First IPS fic! This is a little fluff about Mary's baby, Mary, and Marshall. Please read and review!


**Oh, boy. I must still be high from the awesomeness of ****Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl**** to be attempting this. Or my writer's block on my other stories is so bad I might blow up if I don't write **_**something**_**. I am **_**extremely **_**new to In Plain Sight. I have seen **_one_** episode (Provo Cation) and like all the fan vids out there. So this is probably going to be way off base, but please be nice!**

**So the idea for this story just came from Mary and her baby. I decided to make a little life for it…which sounds creepier than I meant. Sigh, whatever. We'll see how this comes out. And I just want to make it clear that I like Marshall…a lot! Major Provo is kind of handsome/sweet but I think he and Mary wouldn't work out. **

**Okay, here goes absolutely nothing. **

_Age 8_

Laney Shannon looked a lot like her mother. She didn't however, act like her. Where Mary was brash and loud and sarcastic, her daughter was thoughtful and shy and true. Some mornings when she woke up, Laney would stare in the mirror, watching the sleep-blurred refection. She could see her mother as though she was standing there instead. Her father was the one she couldn't see. She didn't really know him, other than what her mom said about him, and she wasn't sure if she'd even met him yet. She wasn't sure if she wanted to.

He had left. Just like everyone else did at one point or another. Other than dying, most people only hung around to say things like, "You look so much like your mother!" then, _poof, _they went back to where ever they had come from. Mary Shannon had a very…interesting, affect on most people. That usually made them run, rather than walk, away. There was really only one person Laney could think of knew her _and _her mother at all.

Marshall Mann had always been there. As long as Laney could remember, there was her mom and Marshall. He was like family…he really was family. Sure, Laney had her Aunt Brandi and Uncle Peter and Jinx, but…but she didn't love them as much as she loved Marshall.

Marshall never laughed when she told him that she liked to read more than she liked to talk (or when she had shown him her dog-eared dictionary that she carried around to read). He never made her feel useless or small or young or naïve. He talked to her like she was a grown up and like her option mattered. He always made her giggle with his long winded speeches. And he had the nicest eyes.

Laney knew her mom liked him. She didn't seem to get angry at him like she did when she was around most other male species. And if she did get mad and threaten to kill him or something, it was pretty playful. And even an eight year old could tell that he liked her.

Sometime Laney dreamed of having a real family. A mom and a dad and a daughter. A mom and a daughter was pretty good, but it always felt like something was missing. Mary was the best mom a kid could ask for; she wasn't as tough as she looked. She smiled a lot more at home then she did at work…Laney didn't understand why. She had a pretty smile.

If Mary had to go out of town for work and none of her relatives could stay with Laney, she got to stay with Marshall. It had only happened once so far (that she remembered) and it had just been a night, but it had been a blast.

That day had started out normally, wake up, school, bus home. But instead of Aunt Brandi waiting, it was her mom. She had told her to hustle her buns into the car, that they were going back to her work. They had barely gotten past the door to the office before Mary pointed and directed, "Sit, stay, amuse yourself." Laney didn't really understand what her mom did, but she knew it could be stressful. Mary had forgotten to ask how her day had gone.

So for three hours Laney had played in the space between Mary and Marshall's desk. She had colored with a black sharpie, read three more pages of her dictionary, and done her homework. She could hear arguing in the glass-walled room behind her, but she didn't really pay it too much mind.

When her mom stomped back towards her desk, she was multi-tasking. She was shoving things into her bad, talking (and hanging up on) several people on her cell, talking to Marshall, yelling at Mr. McQueen, slamming her desk drawers, and finally talking to Laney, "Laney, I have to make a trip…it'll just be for one night, but you'll be staying with Marshall. You be good, don't harass him and do whatever he says. Got it?"

She had planted a kiss on her head and disappeared without waiting for the answer. Laney, Marshall, and Stan were left staring at a closing elevator door. Stan had retreated, leaving just the two of them, "We can get something to eat then stop at you house so you can get your overnight stuff. You like pizza?"

"With anchovies?"

He had nodded in his very serious manner, "With anchovies."

The pizza had been good. The packing had been easy. All she needed was her tooth brush, pajamas, clothes for school tomorrow, her pillow, and her favorite picture. It was taken when she was really little, like five, and it showed Mary holding Laney, both of their faces plastered with smiles. A picture of two-thirds of a family. But Laney still liked it, especially when her mom was away on business.

The night had been short. It was only eight o'clock when they had arrived, but by eight-thirty, Laney had changed into her pjs and fallen asleep on the couch. The thing she didn't understand was how she'd waken up in the guest room Marshall had shown her earlier. And why she could hear her mom and Marshall talking somewhere in the apartment.

She had padded down the hall toward the voices, still rubbing sleep from her eyes and paused in the doorway of the kitchen. She had watched in utter confusion as Marshall handed something to her mom. It had glistened in the light, but she didn't get to see it very well. Her mom was staring at it, Marshall was staring at her.

Laney turned around and padded back to bed. Her muddled brain was beginning to ach, and she knew she could ask tomorrow. Her mom wouldn't lie to her or anything.

The last thing Laney pictured before she drifted off to sleep was the same thing she thought about each night. It was a picture of a tall, thin, dark haired man with his arm slung over the shoulders of a beautiful blond woman with a little girl squashed happily in the middle.

_Age 15_

Although she hadn't known it then, Laney had witnessed a marriage proposal that had taken a lot of courage. But seven years later, it was still working. Laney had classmates who had step fathers, most of them had mean nicknames for them and none of them loved them more than their own fathers. They resented their moms for remarrying, resented their dads for leaving, and the whole family had fallen apart.

But Laney didn't have that. When Marshall had officially become her father, it didn't change much. Now he just lived at her house. But she liked it better this way. Laney knew Marshall had her birth father beat from the very first second she had known him. And she knew he loved her like a daughter, a thought that could still make her smile.

Every single day when she got home from school, Laney would wander around the kitchen in search of food, pet the dog, then wander down the hallway to her bedroom where she did her homework and waited for her parents to come home. And every day she would stop and look at a picture that hung in the hallway. It had been taken right before the wedding and it was a picture of a tall, thin, dark haired man with his arm slung over the shoulders of a beautiful blond woman with a little girl sitting on her mom's lap grinning up at her new dad. Everybody was smiling. A picture of a whole family.

**There. No, I'm down here, *Agent Striker waves from beneath her desk*. Was it to terrible? It was fluffy. **

**Please tell me if I crashed and burned or succeeded!**

**~Striker **


End file.
